Helen Bach: Let’s rally to protect Chalky and friends

It would be remiss of me not to mention how one man’s peaceful protest woke up a town to the dangers of waste plants and incinerators.

Lee Forster, along with his partner Corinna Milligan, Cllr Rob McKellar and a small group of people called CARRP, have been campaigning for two years about the proposals for Corby.

Originally they were protesting about the “resource recovery park” on the Brookfield woodland, plans which were thrown out late last year by Corby Council.

But since January they have been fighting plans to lift the 30-mile limit from where waste could be brought to the Drenl gasification plant on Gretton Brook Road – without which it would not have been financially viable.

While the county council’s development control committee met on March 17, Lee set up Camp Brookfield on Gretton Brook Road, outside the industrial estate where the plant would be built.

His peaceful, non-political protest managed to attract the attention of more than 9,000 people, and his Facebook group is growing and bringing media attention from far and wide.

He, and his group of supporters, have succeeded in alerting Corby to what incinerators will bring with them – the health risks, the increased lorry traffic and fact that Corby will be a dumping ground for the UK.

At the meeting where the limit was lifted to allow waste in from a 90-minute drive of the plant, it was also said that Brookfield could soon face another application for the “resource recovery park”.

Brookfield is the home of Chalky the white stag and his herd, great crested newts, many other animals including protected species, and a host of beautiful trees, all of which will be under threat from these new proposals.